


time of cruel miracles

by flan (bitehard)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dehumanization, Force Bond (Star Wars), M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:02:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29902203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitehard/pseuds/flan
Summary: There is someone following Rex through the galaxy.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	time of cruel miracles

**Author's Note:**

> This idea was conceived between [María ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont) and me because we are a pair of angst booboos. This is your fault, mostly, so this is for you, too. 
> 
> Credit where is due, there is a moment in this fic that was also directly inspired by [this fic](https://svartalfheimr.tumblr.com/post/641769152194969600/obi-wanrex-platonic-is-fine-too-remembrance) by svartalfheimr. Go read that too because it mended my heart and it's the nicest thing.
> 
> The title comes from Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem. Even if this is not a universe fusion or anything, in a way it's heavily inspired by it.

_We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death._   
_Solaris - Stanislaw Lem_

There is someone following Rex through the galaxy.

A presence he sees on the side of his eye when he's talking with Ezra or one that he can feel, a prickling sensation on the nape of his neck when he is checking the best strategy with Kanan. At first, Rex thought he was finally losing his mind. If he is being honest, he knows that possibility shouldn’t be ruled out, because he is grounded enough to understand that his upbringing and the Kamino training and, Force, the kriffing war broke him in a way that can’t be mended. That it could be needed just a second and all that trauma could breach through the delicate stuff he has piled up since he took out the chip from his head and he would just shatter.

But he is sure. Mostly. His mind may snap, someday, but, for the time being: there is someone following him through the galaxy.

It started after Ahsoka disappeared again from their lives. She said, _I can’t help you_ , and Rex heard, _I can’t help anyone_ , and that made Rex profoundly sad. She is not the ball of energy, full of self-confidence he met so many years ago. Rex is now used to that version of her, and she has her own demons to fight, so it’s ok. No one knows exactly what went down with Vader, and Rex knows when she doesn’t want to be asked. She is here, alive and mostly well, so that’s enough for him.

She deserves to be happy, but he doesn’t know if she will be able to. Rex was made for war but she didn’t know anything else for so much time that Rex thinks she doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Ahsoka was gone, but Rex stayed, even if at first wanted to tell them that he already had too many memories about a war, he didn’t need another one. He still thinks about saying it, but the thing is. Rex should be tired, but it would be a lie to say that he is feeling more alive than in the last few years. It feels good to do something, it feels good to be _useful_.

The first time Rex felt it, it was already night in the base and they were trying to check some possible routes to make the way safer when coming back. Hera and Kanan were there with him and, and Rex felt it, like a whistle in the back of his head; that whistle that has saved him so many times before.

He looked around, heart hammering inside his chest.

“Rex. Rex, are you ok?”, Kanan asked.

Nothing. Nothing on the corners of the room, nothing around them, not a sound. Rex looked at them.

“I… yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just, you know.”

Kanan and Hera shared twin worried expressions and Rex wanted to ensure that everything was ok but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Luckily, Hera said, “well, I think we can continue this tomorrow. There is no rush. Is it, Kanan?”

Rex went to his chambers, but he couldn’t sleep so he got back up and checked all the base for hours, all the turns and corners and he even went to the shipyard and looked into some of the ships there.

It was empty, of course. Rex tried again going to bed, but morning came and he was still there, thinking about when else he had felt something like that, and not liking his answer even a little bit.

It has been happening for a couple of months when something takes place with Ezra. It’s not something that they talked about aloud but it’s obvious that, lately, Ezra has been playing with stuff he shouldn’t. Rex is on his bed, looking at the painted ceiling. In all the time that has passed since the war, his knowledge of the Force hasn’t increased a lot. He had a talk with Ahsoka, a very short, very painful one. They got drunk together, for the first time ever, and talked about the war, and shared memories and it was not bad until _it was_. To reminisce is to stop, and they can have that luxury. It’s just better to forget it. To forget it all.

His connection to the Force, whatever it was (Force-sensitive, Ahsoka had slurred some moment in the middle of the night, not daring to hope but failing, _in the future, the Jedi will be back_ , and Rex hear the real sentence, _but not me_ , people like that, like _him_ , even if they didn’t talk about that) had mostly disappeared after the clusterfuck that was his desertion and the end of the war and the escape from Mandalore and his brothers. It was there, he thinks, but what was he going to sense if all the Jedis had been…

Between everything else, he had also felt the severing of his bond with general Skywalker. With Anakin. Everything was happening too fast but he had sensed that, like a wound made and cauterized right after with a laser beam. He has never asked Ahsoka about him and Ahsoka has never tried to talk about it. They don’t talk about that day. Everything he knew broke then, he was _so sure_ they would win, how could they not? How could they lose, with people like Anakin and Kenobi, who could move planets with their will alone if they put their mind to it?

Rex knows, now. It’s kind of ironic that after three years of taking pride in being better than droids, having to fight for every inch of recognition, as if saying that being better than clankers was _something_ , they were even worse. Beyond everything, sometimes it’s the humiliation that gets to Rex. The last, grand final joke against them.

At least droids know they have been programmed, really.

He stands up, almost as if he had been woken up from a terrible nightmare. He is sweating, a feeling that something is terribly wrong.

There is someone following him through the galaxy.

Also: There is someone leaning against the wall.

Rex, Anakin says.

Rex doesn’t move. It has to be a dream, but Rex knows the qualities of his dreams. He dreams a lot, with the war and with Anakin and with his dead brothers and with the brothers that suffered a whole other type of terrible fate. If this were a dream, Anakin would be older, his hair longer, his expression wearier. If this were a dream, something would be reflected on his face: a laugh, anger, the glint of his eyes when he was getting ready to wreak havoc.

If this were a dream, he would seem more like himself.

Anakin’s expression is mostly blank. Rex closes his eyes, he thinks, _what is going on what the fuck is going on_. Rex tries to remember, in all the alien races he had to memorize when he was in Kamino and all the ones that they discovered, one that could make a doppelganger of someone. Maybe there is something like the worms of Geonosis, maybe…

The room is empty when he finally opens his eyes. His heart is hammering against his chest, trying to escape it, or trying to kill itself, maybe. He can understand the feeling, to be honest. There is not a hint in the room, nothing that would indicate that he hasn’t been alone, and yet Rex can still feel the presence in the room.

It’s like a dam has been opened. Every time he is alone, and sometimes when he isn’t, he can see or just _feel_ Anakin beside him, behind him, that mischievous look on his face. It takes him some days to gather the courage to talk him back. Everyone is already asleep and Rex is so kriffing tired and he _misses him so much_ that when he says his name he just answers.

“What. What do you want?”

I thought you weren’t going to answer me, Anakin says. It sounds weird. Rex understands the difference: it doesn’t work like a normal, _human_ voice, it’s an imitation of Anakin’s voice projected directly into his head. Like his memory of him, weaponized.

Rex sighs. “I don’t know what would be worse, to say something and assume I’m crazy or actually going crazy because you won’t stop saying my name.”

Anakin laughs, soft. It’s a softness he has only seen rarely once the war became… well.

“So what you’re saying is that you’re crazy anyway?”

Rex shows his hands in a wide movement.

“How else do you explain this?”

Anakin shrugs.

I don’t.

_Yeah, you wouldn’t._

The apparition comes and goes. Rex gets used to it, sometimes he ignores it and sometimes they talk. In the soft darkness of his room, Rex watches the ghost move like Anakin and talk like Anakin and gesture like Anakin and sometimes wants so badly to touch him that his heart speeds up and has to bite himself in the soft meat under his thumb until the pain makes the desire recede. His teeth leave white marks that redden up when the blood starts circulating again; Anakin tilts his head, says, what’s wrong, Rex, and that tone gets under his skin the most. The one that used with him sometimes, a forbidden tone, for Anakin but especially for Rex.

It’s a voice that was used only sometimes, only when they shouldn’t, and makes Rex want to put his hand between his legs and fuck his fist, thinking about those moments, but it’s someone that is dead, he died and he is not in this room, with Rex, he can’t be; because if he is, _if he is_ —

Maybe his affinity to the Force has been corrupted, maybe what’s karking Ezra is making him go crazy, too.

The Force can be scary, dark, and too powerful like it should not be controlled by just a man; but it seldom feels like that with Kanan. In a way he remembers Rex of Kenobi, they both have (had) the kind of balance Anakin was never able to achieve. He watches Kanan fight a ball, blind as he is, and just by that Rex himself feels calmer.

“I have to tell you something”, Kanan says.

Rex doesn’t know if he wants to hear what he has to tell him. At first, he has come to ask him about _him_ , but he finds out that he can’t, even if it’s the obvious answer. This is not the army, and Kanan is not his superior. But Rex isn’t sure he _wants_ to know, or if he wants Kanan to know, or if would be able to explain.

Kanan didn't know Anakin. He didn't see him battling against hundreds of droids, and winning, and he couldn't feel that surge of energy when he decided something was _enough_ , that something had to end right now. Rex used to think that he was unstoppable, a force, never said better, that nothing in this world could make him deviate from his path. Months passed until Rex knew that no one else felt him like he did, a mix of always watching him and those moments when his hair would stand up.

“If you knew Skywalker, you must have fought with Kenobi, too, didn’t you?”

Rex stops breathing. In the corner, Anakin looks at him, tilts his head, smiles almost shy.

With his heart making a brave effort to leave his body through his mouth, Rex nods. “Yeah, “ he is able to say, voice faltering. “Yeah. We— Yeah.”

We fought, he thinks, and it’s a good way to put it. A simple one.

“He is alive. I didn’t know if it was, you know, my decision to tell you”.

Rex could get angry but he is just feeling too much, a rush of _reliefhappinessworry_.

“He is hidden, isn’t he?”

Kanan nods. There is a sense of peace around him and Rex wants to dwell on it.

“I don’t think I should tell anyone where he is. Ezra found him”.

Sharp pain in his palm, Rex notices that he is clenching his fist so hard he is wounding the flesh with his nails. He wants to ask. He wants to ask so bad that he doesn’t care, for a second, why he is hiding or what is protecting. He just _wants_.

“I won’t—”

“I know. You are… you’re something nice in the Force, Rex.“

It doesn’t matter what that means. It doesn’t matter that Anakin looks at him, the smile wiped out from his face.

It’s a long and lonely way to Tatooine. Rex has traveled a lot on his own, but lately, he has gotten used again to the noise in The Ghost. Anakin is not there. He has not since Rex went into the ship, coordinates already entered in the commands.

In a way, it’s like all this time since the war has not happened at all. His hair is white, now, but so is Rex’s, and he would recognize that way of walking anywhere in the galaxy. Rex knows the exact moment Kenobi knows he’s there; he stops dead in his tracks, in the middle of the market; the people keep walking but it’s like they avoid the exact place he is, hunched shoulders and body tense. He looks back, right at him.

Rex walks to him and when he reaches him, the tension drops from his face in favor of something near happiness.

“My friend,” he says, although never called him that. There was no need, Rex guesses. “I’m very happy to see you, but you should not be here.”

“I know”, Rex answers.

Kenobi looks at him, that inquisitive eyes fixed on him and Rex can feel the subtle poke of his force, he lets him in, and Kenobi tilts his head.

“That is new,” he says. They are still in the middle of the market, but it’s as if the people had disappeared around them.

Rex smiles.

“No. No, it's not.”

Kenobi moves his hand to his chin; a reflex of an old move that Rex has seen dozens of times.

“Let’s go for a drink, for old friends?”

*

“I’m very happy that you are alive. I don’t know what to call you, though.”

Kenobi smiles. “My name would be nice, but I don’t think that it's very wise. They know me as Ben, here.”

“You kept the surname.”

“Yeah, I did,” he shrugs. “I was never very good at stealth, truth be told”.

“There was never the need, not for you and certainly not for—”, but he isn’t able to say his name. As if he were summoned, Anakin it’s on the next table. Rex closes his eyes for a second, rubs his temples with his fingers, cold from the glass. Kenobi notices it and puts his hand over Rex’s wrist, and a surge of his energy calms him. Anakin is still there, brow furrowed and arms crossed over his chest, now further from them, leaning against the column. Kenobi doesn’t seem to see him (it) or at least he doesn’t react in any way.

They keep talking, which is easy and also a little awkward because, before this moment, their only time together had been at war, and everyone they know it’s dead or on the run, but they make do. Kenobi always makes everything seem so easy, so natural, Rex has missed him but until they are walking side by side, arms grazing, he doesn't realize how much.

Once in his house, they sit, Rex on the only chair of the house, a small one-room place with the said chair, a table, a small kitchen-type corner, and the bed. Kenobi takes out some cold tea from a conservator on a corner, they drink it in silence. Way better than the beer. Anakin it’s nowhere to be seen, he had disappeared again when they came walking through the sand.

“Are you going to tell me something about the fact that you can feel my Force? Or are we going to keep ignoring it?”

Rex looks at him, but he is smiling. A sad smile, without resentment.

“I didn’t know how to start.”

“Did you know you had it? Then?”

He nods.

“At first I thought it was a normal thing, with him.” He doesn’t say his name. It hurts, and it could be dangerous, and Kenobi knows perfectly well who he is referring to. “Months went by until I realized that it _was_ between me and them but the level of connection was not, you know, normal. I still had no way of feeling what you or Ahsoka were feeling, but after, you know, everything. I started to feel things more clearly.”

Kenobi bites the side of his thumb and hums.

“That explains some stuff. He never told me about you two. About your… bond. Well, it’s obvious that he didn’t, but,” Obi-Wan says, voice carefully controlled, Force closed up into him like a tomb. “But there was a lot he didn’t tell me, I guess.”

It’s also obvious he is not talking only about that, that he knows their relationship was beyond what they should, but Rex lets it pass.

“I didn’t tell anyone, either”.

Obi-Wan hair and beard are white, but he still has the same eyes. He seems to have had rough years, but not so bad that it has crushed his spirit. Feels good talking to him, after all this time.

“Anyone? Not even Cody?”

Rex laughs. “Didn’t know if it was legal for me to have that kind of… attachment to my general. Cody wouldn’t have done anything but… I guess I didn’t want to add more worries to all he had.”

He was relentless, so efficient and effective that Rex more than once thought how lucky they were to have him on their side.

“I guess Cody did some things, then. I guess he wasn’t as lucky as me”, he guesses, touching his temple, just a hint of sarcasm when he says _lucky_ because he doesn’t _feel_ happy. He is watching Kenobi carefully.

A crease between his eyes is the only sign that it’s something he doesn’t want to talk about.

“I couldn’t save him. No, that’s not… I didn’t even try. But I didn’t go back to kill him, either.”

“He would have. Killed you, I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s ok.”

“No,” Rex says. “It karking isn’t.”

“Beer helps. Even as bad as the one we had,” says him, but Rex ignores the joke and doesn’t smile. Something is bleeding from his closed defenses: so much guilt isn’t something that can be contained in one man.

“Do you think he’s alive?”

Kenobi doesn’t answer right away, which tells Rex two things: he _knows_ Cody is alive and it’s not good.

“Do you really want to know?”

A beat passes, and as Rex doesn’t answer, Kenobi’s face does something, like a caricature of a smile, closer to a grimace.

“As happy as I am to see you, Rex, I don’t think you’ve come all the way to Tatooine to talk about past times. I’m not that good of a company.”

“I would have come anyway, you know, even if I didn’t have something to ask.”

“But you do have something to ask.”

Rex nods, takes air, and talks about it. He starts with Ahsoka, because that’s at least one good news he has and once he starts, it gets easier, and Kenobi doesn’t interrupt him once. He explains everything, heart open and raw and trusting on Kenobi’s hands. He lets him see, too, as far as he knows how; it’s easier with Kenobi’s Force guiding him, like a light in the dark.

When he is done, he looks at Rex and says, _come here_ , and sitting in his bed, hard and uncomfortable they finally surround each other for a second. Kenobi seems so lonely as Rex feels, and they hug each other, forehead touching, and Rex feels a surge of _something_ he didn’t know was there, a need to touch him more, a need to feel that he is not alone in this, alone in the universe.

Kenobi whispers, _I know_ , even if Rex hasn’t talked, and touches Rex’s face, in a way that no one has touched in a long time. He ended up for some years hating his own traits, the way sometimes he could see his gestures in Gregor, like that was written in their DNA, too. Now he’s made his peace but the reverence in Kenobi’s dry, calloused fingers it’s the only thing he needs to feel himself heating up.

Kenobi doesn’t say anything else. He will do, after, but now they both need this in a way that they shouldn’t; Rex doesn’t dare to look away from his eyes because he just knows what it is the shadow he can see in the corner of his eye.

When Kenobi kisses him, Rex closes his eyes and doesn’t think at all anymore.

The second sun is rising. Its crimson light bathes everything and even if Kenobi’s window is small, it enters the room like a wave. He is sitting on the bed, stark naked, freckles and scars composing a painting of red and white and brown that Rex tries to ingrain in his brain like it was the map to a destination Rex isn’t able to reach but wants anyway. Reminders of the last night on his own body, the burn against the nape of his neck, Kenobi’s soft beard making him whimper with the shiver that went down and up through his column, the marking of teeth on his clavicle, the moan, something that sounded maybe like pain, maybe like _more_. Kenobi sighed inside the kisses when Rex opened his legs, the way he grunted while he bottomed out. His face when he came, so close; in the moonlight, his hair seemed darker, like before.

Rex’s orgasm came almost unannounced, like a punch right into his gut.

“The Force always leaves a print”, says Obi-Wan, voice cracking. He coughs and the sound is too loud in the silence of the room. “Anakin and you were fighting side by side for more than three years, and if you were… well. _As you were_ bonded, it could happen something like this. I think.”

“I don’t know what he wants.”

“I don’t know that much about this; most of the books have been burned, and even when I was a Master, this was not something that was talked about. I don’t even know if it’s _him_. But it will probably pass, with time.”

Rex swallows.

“I could teach you to meditate; that could help. But you can’t stay here long. And you can’t tell anyone—”

“Don’t insult me, _Ben_.”

A weak laugh.

“That's fair.”

A beat.

“Do you know what happened to him? Maybe—”, he feels stupid but seeing Kenobi has made him hopeful. Obi-Wan stands up from the bed, in all his naked glory, no shame, no indecisiveness. He looks at Rex from his shoulder, and then at the corner, from where not exactly a shadow, because a shadow has an origin, more like an absence of light, looms.

Rex wanted to ask; there is his answer.

“No. Don’t hope, Rex, hope can be a dangerous thing, if focused on the impossible. He was killed,” it’s what he says, “by Vader.”

Obi-Wan is looking over the window, now, the orange light bathing his face; Rex can only see the side of it. For just a second, Obi-Wan lets himself open, and Rex only feels, so much regret, so much pain, so much inside him.

Rex could ask. Could press him for details, but in the end, he decides against it. He stands up, goes behind him, and rests his chin on his shoulder, hands around his waist. This close, he can feel him trembling, or maybe the one trembling is Rex because Obi-Wan turns around and kisses him before they can say anything else.

They ignore the shadow in the corner while it watches them.

**Author's Note:**

> Well. Now I'm sad, too. 
> 
> I'm [youbitehard](https://youbitehard.tumblr.com/) at tumblr!


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